Tara Cole, played by Jeri Ryan, is an old friend of Sophie Devereaux's and a fellow grifter. When Sophie left the Leverage team to do some soul-searching, she asked Tara to fill in for her to pay back an unknown debt. Unlike the rest of the Leverage crew, Tara grifts for money, and for a time, demanded a cut of whatever money they recovered, which Nate paid out of his own funds. Although the team was mistrustful of her at first, she soon became a valued member of the team.

Tara's history is largely unknown, but she has dropped hints that suggest she was trained by the FBI, and may also have some experience in military intelligence; she referred to time spent "at Quantico", but did not specify with which agency. She speaks Russian and German and knows how to deal with Russian bureaucracy. She also has training in cryptography. In The Runway Job she demonstrated she is adept at hand-to-hand combat. Besides she also reveals a scar on her head in The Future Job, where she plays a psychic in a con, she claims the scar is from a brain tumor that the doctors got rid of, but afterwards "was twice blessed. With renewed life, and with this gift." Like Sophie, she has a large number of identities.

Her grifting style is quite different than that of Sophie's. While Sophie usually would get close to a mark by appearing as a business partner, Tara prefers to use her looks. Instead of trying to do business with marks, Tara will often flirt and get the mark to fall for her. This is made apparent in The Bottle Job when she got the mark to trust her simply by flirting. Later, in The Maltese Falcon Job, she gets into nothing but a towel to try and get a guard to let her into a room. When the guard hesitated, she dropped the towel and let the guard see her naked.

Gina Bellman who plays Sophie Devereaux was pregnant during the filming of the last half of the second season, and that is the reason for Sophie traveling the world and not making much of an appearance during that time. It's also the reason that Tara was introduced to the series. When Sophie comes back in the second season finale, Tara leaves the team and goes her own way.